The A-Game (new version)

Chapter 16

     I felt my cheek painfully hit concrete and I unconsciously threw myself down to the pavement. I was delirious. I could feel no pain. Was I shot? In what felt like a hours in the few moments of my self-analysis, I figured I wasn't shot. Then who was? I lifted my head. Janice had her hand on Leo's back. None of them seemed hurt. But it was only yards behind them that Paul was curled on the ground, his expression one of mild shock, with the side of him covered in a large blossoming pedal of blood. He held his hand over it with very little interest. I however, could feel my heart in my throat. Another gunshot sounded, and another, and despite my earlier beliefs that I was a coward, I crawled toward Paul army style, my elbows grinding painfully into the hard cement.

"Not me. Not me." Paul said. He felt inclined to whisper, hoarse and loud over the gunshots that rang through our silence. "-only grazed. It's a scratch. Don't worry about me." His hand was still clasped firmly over his side, but I could get a rough idea of where the blood was spreading from, from where the source was. I believed him when he said it was a scratch, just a graze, and I breathed a sigh of relief. I looked in his Paul's eyes. A sturdy, grounded, calm blue. We both exchanged a look that knew he had been aimed for and barely missed.

Just behind us, Jerod wasn't flinching. I looked at him for a moment and speculated just how strong a man could be not to flinch when a gun was shot. It was then that I noticed his slumped posture, and the way his head leaned uncomfortably against his shoulder. His hands were splayed, and opened haphazardly on either side of him. They reminded me of wilting flowers as I looked up at his face. A small lock of hair had positioned itself over his nose, but I could see his eyes, open and unseeing, gazing with languid interest in the direction from which the shots had come. Blooming beneath the ropes that tied him was a steady rose of blood right where his chest was, blown open and blistered with the shrapnel from his sternum. Jerod was dead.

Another shot punctuated the silence. I turned to Paul. He hadn't seen it. The bullet that grazed him took the life of someone else. I tugged on his arm. Paul turned his head to face me. He leveled his gaze on mine.

"Paul, Jerod is dead." I didn't know why I cared to tell him, but I felt obligated to. Paul sighed against the concrete. It was cool against our skin.

"Sh*t." he muttered to the ground. He knew what I knew, that he had been spared and Jerod hadn't been. He had no reason to feel guilty, but I could see it settle in his eyes.

"It isn't your fa-," I began to say, but I was cut off by a bullet blasting in front of me by just a few feet. It suddenly dawned on me. It took a really bad shot to miss four people laying, unencumbered by obstacles or barriers, and given by the very near shot to Paul, this person wasn't a bad shot. Why they would aim for Paul and then miss all the others, I had no idea, but I was certain then that these gunshots served as a warning. They were not meant to harm us.

At last, the gunshots ceased, and my theory was proven true by the tight whirr of a loud speaker clicking on.

"Did you get the message?" a woman's defiant voice spoke out to us, amplified and absent of distinct accent. Her voice was foreign to us, coming from the large end of a battery-powered cone and pocked by whiny knots of the loud-speaker's feedback. I heard her take a large amplified intake of air before speaking again.

"I could've killed you if I wanted to. I used to work for the police force. I'm a fairly good shot," she paused, and I could hear the sound of her tongue breaking through her lips to lick them.

"We're coming out now. With my gun. If either of you shoot or try to run I will not hesitate to pull the trigger."

All of us laid with our chins painfully pressed against the ground so we could see who exited the buildings ahead of us. We were in a cove of shops, an outlet mall shaped like a C. Two people exited from the building at the corner of the C: a tall, gangly black figure, and a pale white figure, dwarfed when compared to the figure beside it. As they drew nearer and nearer to us, it became evident that the short, white figure was a woman with long, dusty brown hair. A thick clump of sloppily cut bangs were obscuring her right eye. The person beside her was a man, black as coffee, who carried a limp. The woman held a gun at her side, and the man held nothing. His arms swung beside him, thin and spindly like his legs. It was obvious even from this distance that the man's head was shaved. A white glare of sunlight bounced from his head, much in likeness to the soap bubbles.